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Arriving at an acceptance of one's mortality is a process, not an epiphany.

Atul Gawande

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Atul Gawande
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: May 11
Journalist
Medical Writer
Professor
Researcher
Surgeon
Brooklyn
New York
Atul A Gawande
Atul Gawande
Arriving
Mortality
Acceptance
Process
Epiphany

More quotes by Atul Gawande

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Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.
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Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine.
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This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong.
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I think the extreme complexity of medicine has become more than an individual clinician can handle. But not more than teams of clinicians can handle.
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Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.
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People who reach certain levels of frailty, more important than getting their mammogram, more important than getting their blood pressure tweaked, they're at high risk of falling. If they fall and break their hip, they not only die sooner, they die miserably.
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What about regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?
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If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me.
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A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue.
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The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.
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Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.
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Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.
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We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way norms and standards change.
Atul Gawande
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We recruit for attitude and train for skill.
Atul Gawande
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You know, 97 percent of the time, if you come into a hospital, everything goes well. But three percent of the time, we have major complications.
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We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.
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This is the reality of intensive care: at any point, we are as apt to harm as we are to heal.
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Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.
Atul Gawande
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Having great components is not enough, and yet we've been obsessed in medicine with components. We want the best drugs, the best technologies, the best specialists, but we don't think too much about how it all comes together.
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Writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.
Atul Gawande